My trips to NY always start the same. I put in an 8 hour day at UPS, rush around all day to get out by 530 pm and drive off into the night. This trip was the exception. My UPS truck broke down an hour from UPS building with only an hour left to work. Not a great start to my trip but luckily I only lost an hour. Then, with only 30 minutes under my belt, there is a accident and I am stopped again. I thought for sure the drive was going to be extra long but before I knew it I was in the parking lot in Altmar, NY at 330 am. and after a quick  30 minute nap, I was ready to hit the water.

Instead of telling you every detail of my trip, I wanted to give you some tips and ideas to help  make a your next trip to the river a success.

My spring trip is always interesting. The water is colder than the fall along with the air temperature. My guides freeze and often times so does my reel.  I’ve lost many good fish because of this. My buddy tried spaying pam on his reel and line to keep it from freezing. He said it worked only half the time. Ive never tried it but half the time is better than it being frozen all the time. One thing I have tried is stripping out 20 or so feet of line and let it hang in the water below me. This gives me a little time to fight the fish and break the ice out of my reel when I hook a fish. 

In my 20 years of fishing the Salmon River this I’ve come to know, fly selection is everything   and my fly selection has grown over the years. I always start my morning with the same fly, a blue egg pattern with a red tail which produced very well this trip. I actually caught 90% of my fish on that but the other hot fly was a green sparkle maggot caddis fly.

I’ve read over the years that the green caddis nymph was great for Salmon river but I have never had much luck with it. There was a guy above me on this trip that walked a fish down and I helped net.  I saw a green caddis worm in it’s mouth.  It wasn’t long after that my buddy Scott walked up and said he had just hooked a fish on the green caddis worm.  Of course I had none in my box so I grabbed two from Scott and handed them out to a couple other friends. This soon became the fly of the weekend. I bounced between that and the blue one and red egg pattern.  I spent the evenings drinking bourbon and tying for the group.

Listen and observe. Both are important.  Pay attention to your surroundings.  Sometimes all it takes is to select the right fly and just like that, you’re in the fish.  People talk when the catch fish. It doesn’t take long to figure out what they are using.  I heard someone say they caught a fish on a Alevin fly.  Spring is when the baby fish start showing up in the river so I’m assuming that is why. I didn’t have any in my box but next March I will.

So to wrap up, the river is small and people usually fish with friends, so pay attention to people who are catching fish. They will tell their buddies and sound travels on the river. You will hear them spill the beans.  ”Small black stones” or “ yellow egg with a black blood dot” or “white maggot fly.”   This is how these flies have ended up in my box over the years. Pay attention and listen up!